ron swords with
which most of the imperial warriors were armed.

We lost heavily in the encounter after the Sagoths reached us; but they
were absolutely exterminated--not one remained even as a prisoner. The
Mahars, seeing how the battle was going, had hastened to the safety of
their buried city. When we had overcome their gorilla-men we followed
after them.

But here we were doomed to defeat, at least temporarily; for no sooner
had the first of our troops descended into the subterranean avenues
than many of them came stumbling and fighting their way back to the
surface, half-choked by the fumes of some deadly gas that the reptiles
had liberated upon them. We lost a number of men here. Then I sent
for Perry, who had remained discreetly in the rear, and had him
construct a little affair that I had had in my mind against the
possibility of our meeting with a check at the entrances to the
underground city.

Under my direction he stuffed one of his cannon full of powder, small
bullets, and pieces of stone, almost to the muzzle. Then he plugged
the muzzle tight with a cone-shaped block of wood, hammered and jammed
in as tight as it could be. Next he inserted a long fuse. A dozen men
rolled the cannon to the top of the stairs leading down into the city,
first removing it from its carriage. One of them then lit the fuse and
the whole thing was given a shove down the stairway, while the
detachment turned and scampered to a safe distance.

For what seemed a very long time nothing happened. We had commenced to
think that the fuse had been put out while the piece was rolling down
the stairway, or that the Mahars had guessed its purpose and
extinguished it themselves, when the ground about the entrance rose
suddenly into the air, to be followed by a terrific explosion and a
burst of smoke and flame that shot high in company with dirt, stone,
and fragments of cannon.

Perry had been working on two more of these giant bombs as soon as the
first was completed. Presently we launched these into two of the other
entrances. They were all that were required, for almost immediately
after the third explosion a stream of Mahars broke from the exits
furthest from us, rose upon their wings, and soared northward. A
hundred men on lidi were despatched in pursuit, each lidi carrying two
riflemen in addition to its driver. Guessing that the inland sea,
which lay not far north of Phutra, was their destination, I took a
couple of